In an opening adjustment system of a turbocharger vane and an exhaust gas recirculation system which are incidentally provided in an engine of an automobile or the like, a motor is used for a vehicle-mounted actuator for driving those systems. The vehicle-mounted actuator is integrally assembled with the motor and is disposed in the environment to which heat is transmitted from the engine.
The motor comprises a motor body including a coil of which winding is wound in plural phases and a motor terminal for connecting a conducting wire from the coil to the outside; and a circuit body, which holds a circuit board having circuits mounted thereon for supplying an electric signal to the motor body and is assembled in the motor body. In the circuit, energizing conditions such as the amount of electric current supplied to the coil or the like are determined, thereby driving the motor by a predetermined rotational angle in the predetermined rotational direction. These rotational angle and the rotational direction of the motor are converted into a traveling direction and a traveling distance of an output shaft incidentally provided in the motor, and an exhaust gas recirculation valve is controlled according to how the output shaft travels.
In such a motor, the circuit board is fixed on the circuit body made of resin. Under the circumstances where the circuit body is assembled in the motor body, it is arranged such that the circuit board and the motor terminal are electrically connected to each other through an intermediate conductor.
As described above, the vehicle-mounted actuator including the motor is disposed in the environment to which heat is transmitted from the engine, and thus the circuit body repeats thermal expansion and contraction with a change in the environmental temperature depending on startup and stop of the engine. This leads the intermediate conductor to be subjected to repeated thermal stresses by the circuit body. Therefore, the repeated thermal stresses give rise to trouble that electrical connection status between the motor terminal and the intermediate conductor becomes instable. Further, due to the nature of the vehicle-mounted motor, the repeated stresses caused by vibration can also become a factor destabilizing the electrical connection.
Here, there exists an example in which one end of a male terminal of which the other end is integrally formed with a first insulator is inserted in and held by a female terminal integrally formed with a second insulator (e.g. see Patent Document 1). However, there is no disclosure fearing influence on the electrical connection status by the thermal stress, nor disclosure of a stress relaxation section.
When a motor is used for vehicle-mounting purpose, reliability is needed for external factors including thermal stress and vibration; however, there has been hitherto not under the necessity of providing a stress relaxation section in an intermediate conductor. Thus, there has been some fear that stresses caused by heat and vibration are applied on the intermediate conductor, which might degrade the reliability of the electrical joint.    Patent Document 1: JP-A1999-018392 (see paragraphs 0044 to 0046)
The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a structure of a motor terminal which provides improved conductive reliability of the electrical joint of an intermediate conductor.